Category Archives: Catholic Bulletin

On 27th November 2003 I went to hear Roy Foster speak at the Royal Festival Hall to promote his new book on Yeats. The event took the form of a talk by Mr. Foster and an interview afterwards by Tom Paulin.

I must say that I never heard such trite remarks about Yeats as those made by Mr. Foster. He said that he had attempted what he seemed to think were unique and revolutionary approaches to biography in that he believed life and art were related and he aimed to get behind the other biographies and autobiographies of Yeats. He also sought to clarify his public life, including his para-fascism. Foster was ‘embedding’ Yeats’ poems in their context to show how he renegotiated his relationship with Ireland. Then we were told he was one of the founding fathers of the new State (which would, I believe, come as a big surprise to its actual founders). His political sense was keenly developed, we were told. Moreover, there was great entertainment to be had from ‘the vituperation’ of the Catholic Bulletin concerning Yeats. His stances were responses to the torrent of such vituperation.Read the rest of this entry →

Seldom did we survey the world, at the turn of the year, in more critical circumstances than now; and only twice before did the affairs of our own country stand at so vital a turning point. The world to-day shivers in the shadow of a threat as dark as that which hung over it in the last months before the World War broke in 1914. Ireland, on the other hand, stands a new stage in her national progress; and we recall the New Year of 1919, and that of 1922.

At the New Year of 1919, Ireland was fresh from the General Election which authorised her leaders to set up Dáil Éireann and declare the nation’s independence. At the New Year of 1922, the Treaty which had been signed under an infamous threat of devastating war on civilians awaited approval or rejection, and Ireland was about to be condemned to the years of strife and decay which the approval, a few days later, drew down.

To-day, the Declaration of Independence of 1920 has been renewed, ratified by the electorate, and carried into effect, and an Independent Sovereign State came into being in the last days of 1937, while the New Year sees the nation embarked on the task of the recovery of the still-occupied Six Countries.

Where is that city of Danzig? A glance at the map shows that East Prussia is separated from the rest of Germany by a strip of land less than fifty miles wide. This is the famous Polish Corridor, a strip of land joining the inland state of Poland to the Baltic Sea. Between East Prussia and the Corridor the river Vistula flows with the city of Danzig lying across the river at its mouth. The city is the river port.

Now Danzig, as nobody denies, is overwhelmingly a German city. Its population, history, culture and language are German. However, the river Vistula in all except the few miles which run through Danzig is Polish, and the natural part of Danzig as a trading city is to serve the basin of the Vistula; that is, to serve as the trading centre for Poland. We have therefore a German city with a Polish trade.

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